Victor Davis Hanson

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One of the

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You see his face and start fearing for your term mark.

Victor Davis Hanson is an expert on ancient warfare and a professor of classical studies. When writing on those fields, he is typically very knowledgeable and strong.

Of course, he has decided that knowing everything about Rome and Greece means he knows everything about everything. He has written books proclaiming that it is the power of ancient Greek culture that led to Western hegemony over the rest of the world (explicitly rejecting geographical/environmental factors, for example). He proudly proclaims the vast superiority of Western culture and how it will always triumph, while at the same time constantly fretting over its possible decline due to the lack of classics education.

He also is a constant contributor to the National Review Online. From that perch, he has consistently banged the (oil) drums for war, both in Iraq and Iran, while at the same time expressing his extreme ignorance of modern warfare. For example, upset that Barack Obama had apparently turned against the idea of "victory", he attempted to write an article expressing that victory was not an obsolete concept, even in the "War on Terror".[1] However, what Obama was talking about (a formal end to war done with a peace treaty signed by representatives of both governments that can be seen and immediately recognized by the entire world) is not at all what Hanson tries to put forward as victory conditions. Instead, he puts forward three very amorphous "victory" conditions that would be very arguable, even if they were possible. At the same time, however, he sets as his goalposts things that are not fully within the power of the US to achieve, as they rely heavily on decisions made by non-enemy governments and domestic constituencies within the US. In short, he is attempting to put a state-based concept onto a much more amorphous situation, and failing to see how it doesn't line up.

And this, in essence, is how Hanson approaches all of politics. He looks back to history (usually Greece or Rome) for something he feels is vaguely analogous, and tries to make them fit.[2]

Hanson is still a major George W. Bush fan boy, writing that "his tenure was without corruption", calling Bush a "centrist", and going so far as to say he may be "a model ex-president".[3] Apparently any day now historians will recognize Bush as another underappreciated Harry Truman-like president and soon he will rise through the historical rankings of presidents. Yep, any day now... still waiting... but it'll come... any day now...

[edit] Footnotes

  1. [1]
  2. An example of this came when he once got into a debate with a libertarian on immigration reform. While the libertarian had plenty of facts and studies, along with philosophical arguments, Hanson just merely repeated some variation on "Unrestrained immigration destroyed Rome".
  3. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/346623/bush%E2%80%99s-warranted-rehabilitation-will-come
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